ABSTRACT

Beo or Beowa seems to me completely a god of abundance and fertility; but as hero and as Beowulf Scylding he is the ancestor and originator of the Germanic peoples; in every respect he is almost identical with Sceafa his father or grandfather. What if we could trace the history of this hero still further? The poem of Beowulf, apart from this son of Scyld, makes mention now of one Beowulf, who was the son of Ecgtheow and sprung from the stock of the Waegmundings; he becomes therefore the nephew of the young Hygelac, king of Angeln; and the heroic deeds of this warrior form the subject of the entire poem. Only it arouses suspicion that the name Beowulf is only to be found in these two cases, and that no record, no legend has anything to tell of a third Beowulf: it is still more suspicious, that Beowulf the Waegmunding, who according to the poem ruled in Angeln with fame for fifty years, appears in absolutely none of the Nordic genealogies, while these not only know the Angles Garmund, Offa and Wiglaf but also Hygelac perfectly well: even more suspicious, that he stands quite alone in the story, leaves no children behind, and founds no royal family: but it is the most suspicious of all, that he has superhuman enemies throughout, fights with superhuman weapons, and fights for superhuman victories. So he has the strength of thirty men, l. 756; he lays low the Nicras in the night, l. 838; he swims seven days long against Brecca, and when he was attacked by the hronfixum and carried down to the sea-bottom, he could still kill his enemies beneath the water, l. 1101 etc. Stripped and unprovided with a weapon, he kills the diabolical Grendel l. 1331 etc. Beneath the poisonous, fiery waves of the Nicera meres he lays low Grendel’s mother, only with a gigantic sword which would have been unusable by anyone else, and which was made by the giant-smiths at the time of their downfall in Noah’s Flood l. 3113 etc. In the end he fights with the blood-and fire-spewing dragon, and although

the latter however in his still earlier shape, not Beowulf the hero, but Beowa the god in Angeln.